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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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Assembly in 1864. In 1867 he was called to the Victorian bar, and in 1869 was returned for the Ovens District, which he continued to represent down to the date of his retirement from politics. He was Minister for Railways and Mines, and Vice-President of the Board of Land and Works in the short-lived Sladen Ministry from May to July 1868. In the Francis Ministry he was Solicitor-General from June 10th, 1872, until the retirement of Mr. J. W. Stephen, whom he succeeded as Attorney-General on May 2nd, 1874. Two months later Mr. Francis retired, and Mr. Kerferd became Premier, still retaining the Attorney-Generalship. His ministry lasted till August of the following year, when he was defeated upon the Budget, and Mr. (now Sir) Graham Berry succeeded him without a dissolution of Parliament. In October Mr. Berry's budget proposals were discussed and defeated, and the acting Governor, Sir W. F. Stawell, refusing a dissolution, Mr. Berry resigned and Mr. Kerferd again became Attorney General, this time under Sir James M‘Culloch, holding office with his chief from Oct. 20th, 1875, until May 21st, 1877, when the result of the general elections threw the Government out of office. Mr. Kerferd's chief legal work, which was compiled in conjunction with Mr. Box, and is regarded as a standard one, was a digest of all the Supreme Court decisions between 1846 and 1871. Mr. Kerferd, who adhered to the Conservative party, was out of office till May 1880, when he became for the third time Attorney-General under Mr. Service as Premier. The Ministry only lasted till August, and Mr. Kerferd was in opposition till three years later, when he resumed his old post in the Service-Berry Coalition Government. In Jan. 1886 he resigned just a month before his colleagues, to accept a position on the Supreme Court Bench, which he continued to hold till his death on Dec. 31st, 1889.

Kermode, Hon. Robert Quayle, of Mona Vale, Tas., one of the principal squatters in that colony, was a member of the Weston and Smith Ministries without portfolio from April 1857 to Nov. 1860. He married Emily, daughter of Henry Addenbrooke, who married secondly, in 1872, the Rev. Hussey Burgh Macartney, youngest son of the Dean of Melbourne. Mr. Kermode died on May 4th, 1870, aged fifty-eight.

Kernot, William Charles, M.A., C.E., Professor of Engineering at the Melbourne University, is the son of the late C. Kernot, M.L.A. for Geelong, in Victoria, who died in 1882. He was born at Rochford, Essex, in 1845, and went to Geelong with his parents in 1851. He matriculated at the Melbourne University in 1861, and graduated with honours in 1864, receiving his certificate of C.E. in 1866. From 1865 to 1867 he was in the Mining Department, and from 1867 to 1875 in the Victorian Water Supply. In 1868 he succeeded Mr. James Griffith as Lecturer on Surveying at the University. In 1869 he took up engineering lectures at the University, in addition to surveying; and in Jan. 1883 was appointed Professor of Engineering, which position he still holds. In 1874 he was chief of the photo-heliograph party at the Melbourne Observatory, in connection with the transit of Venus; and from 1875 to 1878 he took a friendly interest in the success of Mr. Brennan's now famous torpedo. In 1864 he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission on Railway Bridges for New South Wales, and two years later he reported on the Derwent Valley Railway Bridges, Tasmania, for the Tasmanian Government, and on underground telephone wires for the Victorian Government. In 1887 he presented to the University, as a Jubilee gift, the sum of £2000, to endow scholarships in physics and chemistry.

King, Hon. George, M.L.C., whose father was a partner in the firm of Balfour & Co., of Riga, Russia, was born in that city on Dec. 21st, 1814, and received his education and mercantile training in London and on the Continent. He emigrated to Australia in July 1839, and settled in Sydney, where he was a director of the Australian Trust Company, of the Commercial Banking Company, and of the London Chartered Bank. He was for fifteen years chairman of the Australian Mutual Provident Society, for some time a member of the Board of Advice of the Australian Agricultural Company, and has acted as a director of the Clarence and Richmond River Steam Navigation Company, and Chairman of the Melbourne Marine Insurance Com-

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